


Unwound

by sulucissac



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Gen, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 03:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulucissac/pseuds/sulucissac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider is head photographer for a B-list newspaper.<br/>Or, was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

Dave found himself strapped to the table again. Just like before, except not, because this time he wasn't in that white tiled room with a drain in the middle; This time he was in the middle of a river on a small strip of land, and the water that swirled around him was rising. He struggles against his leather bindings until his wrists and ankles bleed, yet makes no progress towards getting free. If anything, they seem even tighter than before.

The metal table is cool underneath his bare skin, and the river rises at a sluggish yet steady pace, as if it were biding its time; as if it knew that Dave wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Why rush?

He cries out for help. The sky turns a flushed scarlet, and it begins to rain down red droplets. They burn at his skin like acid, eating through tender flesh as though it were tissue paper. 

When the river finally pulls him into its grasp, he's almost glad for the water that chokes his lungs.

The river rushes over him, washing the pain away. He closes his eyes.

 

 

_* * *_

 

Dave woke with a start, lying on the floor in a heap of tangled sheets. It must have been the fall that woke him up. He stands up slowly, his body sore all over. The clock on his bedside table reads 4:13 pm.

He stumbles down the hall to the bathroom, fumbling with the door handle, and crouches down over the toilet bowl rim. Convulsions rack his body as he lurches forwards, and by the time he's done a sheen of cold sweat covers his skin. There's a rustling sound somewhere from within the apartment, then footsteps. It's Bro, of course. Fucker's the lightest sleeper you'll ever meet.

He's wearing those awful Bob The Builder boxers (an ironic gift given two Christmases ago, one which Dave now found himself immensely regretting) and a pair of yellow smuppet slippers, but the look on his face is a resigned sort of sadness, completely at odds with this strange attire. He's not wearing his shades, making the shadows under his those amber eyes all too apparent. With somewhat of a start, it occurs to Dave that he's not the only one in the house having trouble sleeping.

"What brings you… to this part of the neighborhood?" Dave coughs, struggling to his feet, and flushes the toilet with a shaking hand. 

The older brother crosses his arms over a bare chest. "When are you going to start taking those pills your psychiatrist prescribed?"

"When hell freezes over." The retort is sharp-- they've been over this before.

Dirk bites his tongue and runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up at odd angles. He closes his eyes and breathes through his nose before opening them again. Was this how it would always be? Him waking up in the middle of the night to find Dave puking his stupid guts out? Him watching as Dave grew thinner and thinner, paler and paler?

He says none of this aloud. It's not like Dave would have an answer for him, anyways.

Dave brushes his teeth in silence, avoiding his brother's concerned gaze. Murky bile spirals slowly down the sink drain, and Dave closes his eyes, but the memories come anyways, like uninvited guests. The white tiled room. The smell of antiseptic.

_Tell us what you know. Tell us the truth._

There's a metallic taste in his mouth, and he dry heaves into the sink. Spittle and toothpaste foam fleck the mirror between coughs.


	2. In the Beginning

Being born only a few years before they reached Earth, Karkat Vantas never had a chance at "childhood". His earliest memories were usually full of wailing sirens, flashing lights, and stony-faced soldiers gripping rifles. They would march down the hall and past his dorm, stomping steps reverberating along the entire ship and down Karkat's spine.   
He remembers lunch time in the massive cafeteria. At first, it was just him and his dorm mate, Sollux. Then others started joining. Aradia came next, then Tavros, then Nepeta, then Terezi, then Vriska, then Kanaya, and so on, so on. Sometimes Gamzee would sit with them, touching shoulder to shoulder with bumbling, stuttering, bashful Tavros. Sometimes Nepeta would convince Equius to sit with them, but that never ended well. Eridan and Feferi sometimes came-- always together, never just one or the other.   
He remembers when he started being old enough to understand the news reports that flashed on every screen and flooded the airwaves. He remembers asking Kanaya why everybody lived so high up in the air, and what humans were, and why were they fighting each other, anyways?  
She said that humans were like her and Karkat, except a little different. They didn't have grey skin or horns, for one, and they all had freakish candy red blood. They had Versace and Prada, though, she said, so they couldn't be all that bad.   
There was never a time when Karkat wasn't acutely aware that his blood color made him a mutant and an outcast. Luckily, everybody seemed to be too busy fighting to ever take much of a second glance. There was only one reason for anybody to care about where the children were, and it was far from pleasant.  
Sometimes, when the soldiers came back, they brought the enemy in with them. Being on home turf, their skirmishes never lasted very long, but this hardly made them terrifying. The humans, with their strange, tender skin, and brittle bones, would leave rainbow slashes all over the walls.  
In situations like this, the children were told to pick up their weapons and head to the first line of defense. They were canon fodder, and everybody knew it. Everybody knew it and nobody cared, because everybody else was busy watching their own respective asses. Karkat lost count of the times he'd almost died, and the times he'd wished to die.  
Karkat remembers watching as a knife buried itself in Tavros's chest; It stuck out the other side, dripping dull orange. He could hear every drop of blood as it splattered against the floor, and every ragged breath dragging itself through torn lungs.   
He remembers the look on Gamzee's face. He remembers the way the highblood tore the knife-bearing soldier in half. He remembers the way Gamzee laughed, as if it was all just hilarious. As if the universe was playing some enormous, dumb joke on all of them.  
Afterwards, Gamzee claimed not to remember what'd happened. In any case, he was transferred into a different district some time later; they were told it was for "specialized training". Nobody knew exactly what that meant, but it didn't sound good.  
Where there had been twelve, there were suddenly ten.  
Everything was different after that. Sollux was moodier, for one. He'd wake up in the middle of the day and begin pacing back and forth in their small, shabby room, muttering to himself.   
Aradia was different, too. Like Karkat, she'd been right besides Tavros when it happened, and she'd gotten a front-row seat to the Makara Incident. Unlike Karkat, she didn't seem to be taking any of it too well. She started talking about death a lot, and there was this eerie, hollow tone to her voice.  
As time went on, their group became smaller and smaller. Nepeta and Equius died sometime during the next year-- together, of course. Somewhere between fifteen and sixteen years old (the younger trolls measured ages in years now, as they now orbited an entirely different sun than the harsh Alternian one), Feferi was killed. It was a surprise to nobody-- she was the heir to the throne, a potential threat for the current empress. But it still hurt. Eridan became increasingly withdrawn, talking only to Kanaya or Sollux, if he talked at all.   
Then, one day, he snapped. He took a rifle from the weapons rack and brought it into the cafeteria, started shooting. Six trolls died before he turned the gun on himself, firing clean through the back of his head, violet matter spraypainting the walls.   
Conversation at meal time halted. Nobody could think of anything so say, yet they were all thinking of the same thing.  
A bit after that, Vriska and Kanaya were transferred out, just like Gamzee had been. "Special training", they'd said. Vriska, with her biting tongue and stupid spider fetish, had mussed Karkat's hair, telling him not to miss her too much. Her voice had sounded as joking and carefree as ever, but when he looked her in the eyes, the fear was almost tangible. She was scared, and she didn't know what was going to happen to her. Everybody was just living in the dark, and it was terrifying.  
Suddenly, Karkat felt all alone.  
He still didn't understand why they had to fight this war, but he did understand one thing: He hated humans. He hated them with every inch of stupid crimson-red soul. It was their fault they were all trapped on this stupid spaceship, and it was their fault his friends were dying, and it was their fault he felt so shitty all the damn time. If he had his way, they would all be wiped out. In a blink of the eye, the war could be over, and there would be no more need to fight. His friends would be able to come back and everything would stop being so weird all the time.  
When a troll turns eighteen, they stop going to training sessions and start hitting the battlefront.   
The day of Karkat Vantas's birthday, somebody pulled the fire alarm. While everyone was lining up in the cafeteria, Karkat, Terezi, Sollux, and Aradia snuck aboard an small, empty carrier ship. Terezi read from the driver's manual while Sollux drove and Aradia kept look-out.  
It was a risky plan. They might be shot out of the sky, by either Earth's forces or their own forces, and there was always the fact that none of them knew what they'd do upon landing-- assuming they made it there without loosing control and plummeting to a loud, fiery demise.   
They didn't care. All they wanted to do was escape, and maybe start directing their own lives for once.  
But by some sort of back-wards, far-flung miracle, things worked out just fine. When they touched down, they found themselves in the middle of some suburban neighborhood, soldiers swarming the area, voices over megaphones yelling for them to put their hands behind their heads. They'd complied and been taken into custody.

A man with rectangular-rim glasses and white hair sat across from Karkat.   
"What do you say you work for us, eh chap?" He'd asked. "You and your pals would be valuable assets to a special team we're building. This could work out for both of us, you know."  
"And what if I say no?"  
"Then that's your decision, and we'll move you into our refuge camp. But, what if you say yes?"

**Author's Note:**

> As I finish up setting the background/world-building, the chapters will get longer, I swear.


End file.
